Jumping on e-scooters on the fly? Think twice

man riding a Bird scooter

Exiting her daughter’s apartment building on a recent Sunday, Janet Korte spotted something that looked just like the motorless Razor scooters her children loved to ride. “So I thought, ‘This’ll be a piece of cake,’” said Korte, 52, who was visiting Kansas City from Wichita. She pressed her thumb on the throttle, and the scooter…

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Anything Concrete? We Check In A Year After Our Infrastructure Project

Last spring, we dug into the state of metro roads, highways, sewers and public transportation in a project called Public Works? The Cost of Our Aging Infrastructure. Now, we’re issuing a report card, of sorts, to see if anything has changed in a year’s time. We track the progress on our weekly public affairs shows, Week in…

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No Public Inspections for Our Rail Bridges

The Buck O'Niel Bridge, left, and Second Hannibal Bridge, right, span the Missouri River.

The old Broadway Bridge, built in 1956 when Dwight Eisenhower was president, is “structurally deficient,” according to publicly available reports, and needs critical repairs. But right next to it stands a much older bridge for which detailed public records are not available. The rusty, century-old Second Hannibal Bridge, finished in 1917 when Woodrow Wilson was…

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It’s the Journey: Biking in the Metro

A man on a bike

Kansas City has one of the highest rates of automobile commuting in the nation. So, what does that mean for the cyclists sharing the road? Public Works? The Cost of Our Aging Infrastructure is a months-long project taking you underneath the pavement to tackle the state of our water and sewers. We track the state of highways and…

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Downstream

Downstream As Kansas City Grows, Rivers Become Increasingly Urbanized By: Jesse Howe Kansas City is served by multiple watersheds, the Blue River being the largest. (184,998 Acres) The watershed runs through four counties before it reaches the Missouri River. 54 percent of the watershed is in Kansas 46 percent is in Missouri Approximately 63 percent of…

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